


the darkness was thick and there was no light (the sun's road to his rising)

by Sovin



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Gods, Metaphysics, Post-Canon, Psychopomps, Reincarnation, Spirit World, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-07
Updated: 2017-07-07
Packaged: 2018-11-28 21:26:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11426493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sovin/pseuds/Sovin
Summary: Combeferre had claimed no knowledge of what happened after death. He would not have put his bet on speaking to a god, nor agreeing to journey through a strange realm between that of the living and that of the dead. He would not have imagined carrying the souls of his friends, in pursuit of hope and second chances.





	the darkness was thick and there was no light (the sun's road to his rising)

**Author's Note:**

> The standard disclaimer that Les Mis is absolutely not mine. The title comes from the N.K. Sanders translation of Gilgamesh.
> 
> There are no graphic depictions of character death, but there is the trauma associated with remembering dying. It's brief, but it _is_ there.
> 
> Because the world absolutely needs fic of Mr. Deny-Nothing chatting with a supernatural being and his subsequent post-life venture through a Vaguely Unsettling cosmological landscape in the pursuit of revolutionary metaphor!
> 
> If you too want to talk about significance-suffused mirrors of nature and metaphysical pondering (and chatty psychopomps), you can find me over here [on tumblr](http://www.sovinly.tumblr.com).

Blue was the last thing that lingered in Combeferre’s sight. Blue, bright and promising.

Its afterimage covered the darkness, lightening the void that softened to black at the edges.

He had the urge to cover his eyes, but ultimately blinked again for another moment’s hold on that sweet, free sky. Because Combeferre should have no eyes and his breath did not stir in his chest.

Combeferre was certain, though he couldn’t feel the spasm of agony of the blade piercing his spine, that he was dead.

There was a barrage of questions he longed to answer: Was this a hallucination or a continuation of consciousness? What difference was there between soul and spirit, and whose definitions were correct? Was he a ghost, or was there a liminal period of time for judgment? Was there an afterlife or a void, and if a void, why a single sustained consciousness floating isolated in darkness?

There was also, he saw – sensed? – a being lurking at the edges of the darkness. Perhaps it would have his answers.

It stepped closer, great paws touching the darkness as if it were distinct and solid ground. It was a strange thing with thick and feathery fur, wings sprouting from its back, a narrow face, fangs sharper than bayonets, and dark, gleaming eyes.

The church would call it a demon, Combeferre thought, or a devil. But no malice glowered from its eyes, even as it sat before him, shoulders strangely hunched and head tilted to the side. Power radiated from it like the sun, as thoughtful as the clawed hand it curled near its mouth as it surveyed him.

“Hello,” the being said, eyes burning like oil lamps.

“Hello,” Combeferre replied, polite. “Am I not dead?”

“Yes,” it told him, “and no. I was waiting for you.”

Combeferre considered that too, and all the things he heard before darkness overwhelmed him. “Just me?”

The being’s bat-like ears flicked, though its oilslick eyes stayed steady on his face. “Not just you, though you are the one I have chosen to trust.”

It had intervened, Combeferre divined. “What are you, that you have waylaid my being? I gather this is… unusual.”

Something in the tilt of the being’s expression allowed that. “I am a god.”

_A_ god, not _the_ God. And not a god that Combeferre had ever heard or read of. Were some things true, or all things? Theology had never been his best area of interest, but he knew a smattering. Were universes like clockwork or gardens? He had come down, before, on the side of clockwork, but this suggested more of the later – there were more similarities than differences between the positions, though, and neither implied the rigidity of the labyrinth.

“Your presence honors me,” Combeferre said, stalling, still bewildered. “What interest does a god have in me or in my comrades?”

The god’s head tilted back to level, and it sat back a little further on its haunches, as though Combeferre had passed some sort of test.

“There are many realms of existence, and I have built a world of my own,” it declared. “It is a little world, and will be populated by new souls. Young souls, who will have much to learn. _You_ are not young souls, but you are not decayed for it, only burnished. You have learned many good things in this life.”

“And you… would like us to pass that knowledge on to your souls?” Combeferre ventured, still uncertain.

It huffed, wings rustling with irritation. “I do not intend to set you as figures of wisdom that you may colonize my people with your own biases. No, I would offer you places among them, with the lessons you have learned – even if you do not recall the how and why of them – that they may learn alongside you, that you all may reach a peace without detouring through the horrors of your world.”

“I see,” Combeferre said quietly, and he did. The fluttering-bird of his heart longed for that freedom, for the chance it promised, and yet. “Yet you only desire to speak to me?”

“I have seen your essence,” the god reminded him. “I have watched you die, lifting the body of your enemy for healing. Your companions have watched you too, and you have won their trust. Not their center, no, nor their leader, but you alone they trust to correct their course.”

“You need our consent.” Obvious, perhaps, but it struck Combeferre suddenly. “You cannot just pull us to your world.”

It hummed an agreement, half a purr and half a bell-strike. “I cannot pull souls across the realms, but you, human, you may. You carry their hearts in you, but could not if they did not trust you to make this decision.”

Combeferre looked down, and perceived for the first time that inside his chest laid a pool of golden threads, glowing gently and wound tightly. Ten threads, and a handful of others that split off from them, reaching, presumably, back to the world of the living. “What would we give up, for this?”

“The cycles of your world,” the god replied, not seeming offended. Its eyes were weighty upon him. “You could find your way back, I am sure, but beyond these borders, your ancestors would not trail you, nor kindred you might have known.”

That made sense, and yet Combeferre’s eyes traced along the split threads. He raised his gaze back to the deity and lifted his brows slightly in question.

“Some of your companions have lines back to the living,” it allowed. Soft, fond. No deception or arrogance there. If this was a god, it was no petty one. “There is a woman, and illness will seize her soon, but she is strong and tightly bound to some of yours. She might make the same journey you are offered, when her time comes. Others, whose deaths lie further afield, may choose to let their ties fade.”

“And what is this journey you speak of?” Combeferre wondered how he could possibly shoulder the decisions of so many, wondered at the trust his friends put into him. Possibility _ached_ , but he was not incautious. He loved them, but dared not lead them to ruin.

The weight of divine regard fell on him even more heavily, and it was a strange and humbling experience, moreso because Combeferre did not feel cowed. The god spoke: “I will call you from your destination, and you will feel the pull of it, but you must walk the steps yourself. At the end, I will meet you, and usher your souls into this new world of mine.”

“Will we remember who we are?” Combeferre asked, more out of curiosity (and a flicker of self-preservation) than anything else. Beliefs in reincarnation never seemed to involved continuous consciousness, if perhaps more weighing of morality, of ethics, than this does. Though, perhaps, it was a test of ethics to be offered this in the first place.

Another purr-and-bell-peal. “Your skills will come back to you as easily, and your wisdom in your hearts, but this world will be gone to you.”

“Is that all that would be left of us?” This was said more softly, more to himself than anything, because Combeferre was unsure if he wanted that answer, if he could give up his self anymore than he could give up his heart.

“You would have the names written on your hearts,” the god said, quiet and kind, in a strange knowing way. “Souls and names are tangled in their essence, and I would not take that from you, Aimée.”

Though Combeferre knew the address to be a deliberate choice, it struck him all the same. His name, he had always known, was a precious gift, an anchor for a boy born to a hateful world. Guilt pierced him, too, to have forgotten on the barricade those who loved and named him, who would collect an empty body and burn empty candles for his soul.

His mother – his _mothers_ – would be proud of his work, even if his soul were beyond their reach. He was sorry all he left for them were letters.

“I will walk your road,” Combeferre told the god, and was startled to find his words had a bright ringing force behind them, bound as surely as any contract or holy vow. Perhaps it was, at that.

“I will await you at the end,” it replied solemnly, one clawed hand reaching out and just touching his chest over his heart before withdrawing.

The deity vanished into the soft abyss, and Combeferre’s heart pulled him forward, feet stepping of their own accord.

It was unlike walking on dirt or cobblestone, rather almost felt as though he walked on _nothing_ , but his footsteps carried him forward all the same, until the velvety dark bled into grey mist, with dim shapes in the distance.

Slowly, the void turned to ashy grass under his feet and the mist resolved into great alders casting long, improbable shadows where they stood. Beyond them stretched a river like still, fine ink, heavy with fog, and through the fog, vague, shifting figures.

Combeferre knew instinctually not to cross the river. It made sense, he thought, considering the myths he knew where death lay across the water. Beyond the matter of his vow, certainly no one had left coins upon his eyes.

Instead, he turned his feet and walked along the bank.

The shadows did not shift and his legs did not tire. There was no gaping hole or aching, failing breath in his chest. Combeferre did not need to breathe at all.

Far in the distance, he heard the clatter of carriage wheels on some unseen road, its driver’s face perhaps shadowed by some broad dark hat. Combeferre ignored it and walked on.

The leaves of the alder were the proper shape, but perfect, neither torn by wind nor bitten by insects, the trees stately and imposing at the same time they comforted and concealed. No wind rippled the river, but the leaves rustled all the same, a gentle and familiar conversation with themselves.

At length, Combeferre saw three old women, bent and withered, seated and laundering on the other side of the still water, their ghastly white sheets fading into the depths.

“I washed your shroud yesterday,” one of them called, her reedy voice cutting through the eerie quiet. “They will bury you in it come Sunday.”

“Thank you, grandmother,” Combeferre replied, voice carrying though he spoke softly, and paused to bow in her direction. “Surely my mother has burden enough without preparing my shroud.”

The old woman did not speak of churches or graves, but simply smiled at him and inclined her head, gnarled fingers still working blood from some other unfortunate’s burial cloth.

Combeferre took another step and then another, with further pang of regret for forgetting the weight his sacrifice would leave to others. It had been the right thing, anyway, to do what had to be done in hopes of brighter dawns, but foolish, infinitely so, to forget that his passing would lay loss at another’s feet. And hadn’t Enjolras even reminded him of the thoughts of the widowed mother?

He had never thought death to be an easy thing, but had assumed all the same that it would be reprieve.

Though, he considered, picking his way around a cluster of reeds and rushes with care, perhaps reprieve lay on the other side of the river, or at the end of his foreboding road. Reprieve did not lay with his body on the streets of the city.

The river curved away from him after many hours of walking, skirting shaggy hills. It wended its way into the distance, looped like spilled yarn until it vanished from his sight.

Instinct was hardly the word for how he knew that he had to turn away from the water, and even knowing was imprecise. The deity’s call was like a tugging in Combeferre’s chest, a plucked string insisting he press forward, and so he turned into the hills.

They were mounds, really, undoubtedly the burial places of ancient men, crowned and wreathed in long grass and wildflowers. Even his light steps echoed over them, hollow, their occupants long since having passed across the water. In the distance, he could just pick out pinpricks of light, where the ancestors of his country were trapped in their barrows, waiting for some last release from the world of the living.

He wavered, curiosity pricked, tempted to go to speak to them, to ask questions that no one living could know the answers to. But his heart still _ached_ from death, from the spools of souls that meant his friends had all died too. So much death and so much blood, and the necessity of it was a wound worse than that of a bayonet, somewhere deeper than his skin.

It was one thing to agree to move on to a new and different world, and another to realize that would walk this quiet, vast intermediacy with the heaviness of his own death on his shoulders, alone and silent in a paler echo of the world.

Combeferre looked down, found his hand resting on his sternum, and sighed a breathless sigh. He moved on.

The alder trees gave way to copses of cypress dotting the tops of hills, wild thickets of blackberry tangling their way along the sides. It was, other than the silence and the cold grey light, very like walking in the countryside on a peaceful day.

A red-brown fox paused in its headlong dash into a blackberry bush, turning its head toward Combeferre, black-tipped ears flicking.

“I cried his death to his mother,” it said, nodding at the tangle of threads in Combeferre’s breast, one paw lifted daintily. “She may not have understood, but she heard.”

Without waiting for a response, the fox sprang into the tangle of vines and disappeared without so much as a rustle.

Which friend, Combeferre wondered. Whose land and mother would have called for the death omen in form of a fox? He did not know, though perhaps his friend would be as lost, whoever it happened to be.

He pressed his palm against his chest, the threads visible again, and studied them in the vain hope he might be able to differentiate them. It was an effort all in vain, for Combeferre lacked whatever senses allowed the inhabitants of these ethereal realms to _know_ which soul lay where.

His fingers passed through them, anyway. Defeated and yet irrepressibly intrigued, Combeferre allowed his hand to drop and continued on his way. His heart was sore even if his legs were not, and yet the mounds continued their long march into the distance.

The river curved back into sight as the land leveled out, a dark pen-stroke against the grass. Its border of alders had thinned, the great trees strung out and dotted along it rather than shading it almost entirely. They were interspersed now with peach trees, slim and branching like an umbrella hung heavy with fruit, their pale orange-pinks tinted celestial silver.

Beneath them, clusters of cranes picked their way through the rushes, turning their heads up to chatter with the ravens perched in the tree branches in an indistinct conversation. One large swan floated placidly in the midst of the dark water, turning its head to regard Combeferre with a thoughtful tilt.

None of them spoke to him this time, but Combeferre nodded a respectful greeting to them all the same, and felt their eyes on him as he made his way down into the plains. One raven lifted free of the trees, dark wings flared as it veered off and away into the distance.

It vanished from sight as Combeferre waded into the grasses, tall and pale golden-green. They parted around him, growing from ankle to knee to hip deep, the dips of their heads rippling with watery crowns of light.

He winced, at first, to crush them under his feet and into the dark, wet soil, but when he looked back, there was no path, only a seamless sea of grassland. Even the alders were indistinct smears, the barrow-hills and the rest of the river beyond his seeing.

Fascinated, Combeferre turned forward again, wading deeper into the plains. It was like nothing he had seen before, dry and rippling and immense. The feathered heads of the grass, almost wheat-like, were nearly silk-smooth under the brush of his hand.

If he were alive, Combeferre would be wary of snakes – even if only grass snakes, generally docile but not creatures he’d wish to trod on all the same. Here, though, he had to imagine that any snakes would be clever enough to evade his footsteps, and the only animals he saw were moths, small flickers of white or green or brown, all but disappearing from sight once they lighted on the grass.

They seemed content to ignore him, one or two fluttering by his head before flitting away once more, unremarkable and fragile. Like the birds and the trees, they were not extraordinary beings, no unusual colors or markings, simply moths more patient and tolerant than their worldly counterparts.

The women and fox, and even the ravens, Combeferre could vaguely pinpoint as omen-bringers or creatures associated with death. He had seen no dark dogs, but then, perhaps he might have, had he followed the rattling carriage sound. Logically, these others were the same. It left him to wonder futilely which cultures had these other creatures in their host of the afterlife.

It was a thorny philosophical question to be sure, and had interesting implications for the problem of evil. Combeferre had never been overly devout, more fixated on immediate ethical dilemmas than more abstract moral ones. Even _had_ there been only one God and one true religion, which he had never been inclined to affirm, especially given the great number of _other_ systems of faith that could not be denied (if also not affirmed),  Combeferre considered that any _benevolent_ God must make allowances for humans trying their best. Mercy _must_ be the prevailing quality of any just deity, when wretchedness ground human lives in its cogs.

In any case, it was clear that Combeferre had been removed from a Christian system, at least any described by the church, or that other systems were held by the universe to be equally valid and to elect a _different_ path was not inherently punishable. That at least spoke for the doctrine of free will.

Combeferre, if nothing else, believed in free will, in the ability of man to _choose_ to become better and kinder and more just. Faith was a private matter, between any one person and the powers of the universe.

His friends’ trust in him could not extend so far as to intercede in matters of faith and religion. Surely Combeferre could not speak for all of them, and so consign them to a possible hell. Yet surely, if Combeferre had been hoodwinked and the creature he spoke to were a demon rather than a deity, a just God could not punish his friends for _his_ choice. He thought that unlikely to be the case in any matter. The deity had truly seemed to need their consent to transfer their souls to its domain.

Whether it had been before their golden threads had been wound, or whether it would be once Combeferre carried them to their destination, it was nearly assured that the deity would be required to let each of them make their own choice.

Combeferre could not affirm knowledge he did not possess, but he could decide to trust.

And for all the endless stretch of pale golden plain around him and the inky river that must not be crossed, this was certainly no Asphodel and no Styx. It was no hellish battlefield of a barricade, with death steeped into paving stones.

So he kept walking.

Surely Combeferre had been walking for days now. The light hadn’t changed, still cool and grey like the hours before dawn in early summer, and there was no watch in his pocket, but all the same, he was certain he had been walking far longer than a handful of hours. Still, hunger did not dog his heels and fatigue did not gnaw at his legs, and his eyes never felt the heavy pull of sleep, so there was no reason to stop.

Much as death stilled the body, it must still the body’s reflection upon the soul. It wasn’t much of a surprise, all in all.

How long had it been since he fell to a man who should never have been an enemy? How long ago had the old woman by the river washed his shroud, the fox cried grief to a friend’s mother? Combeferre must be buried by now, committed to the earth with as much care and pain as when he had been brought into it.

He could only hope such care had been given to his companions, to everyone who had fallen beside him.

It was a quiet sorrow, a well in his chest that weighed heavier than those delicate golden threads.

His reverie was only broken by a moth coming to rest on his shoulder, its white paper wings settling with dignity.

“Thank you, friend, for breaking me from my thoughts,” Combeferre told it with a smile, though the moth seemed not to understand and simply stayed comfortably settled on his shirt.

Once, he thought he saw a herd of horses, tall and shadowed in the distance, but they whirled away, cantering out of sight. In the distance beyond them, the horizon seemed to grow almost purple, breaking up the waves of grass at long last. Slowly, he grew closer, watching the featureless sky give way to a mountain, dark and dimly forested. The grass thinned and deferred to plain earth, parting to allow his exit, and the little moth took off with a start, heading deeper into the field once more.

The base of the mountain was already inclined to be rocky, though the ground was hard packed and steady under Combeferre’s feet as he started up the gentle slope. Cypress again, and yew, roots clinging to the ground.

The stillness and silence continued, but Combeferre felt watched. He dragged his eyes up into the tree-branches, and caught a flicker of white at the corner of his vision.

A barn owl’s white, round face peered out at him, and gave a purring chirrup as though pleased at his attentiveness, not at all similar to its defensive, screeching hiss. Its tawny marked wings shifted and then settled, dark eyes bright and knowing as they followed him.

Aware, now, Combeferre caught sight of more of them occasionally, well-hidden patches of white only just caring to allow him to see them.

“Luck,” a raspy screech called from behind him, “and bravery!”

Soon, the slope steepened, fierce and rocky. There was no marked path, but Combeferre found that he knew where to put his feet easily, the way up clear and obvious. Peach trees began to dot the landscape once more, curling their roots against the rocky outcroppings.

A crow, perched in one of the peach trees, gave a cackling caw.

“Hello, traveler,” she called, hopping further out on the branch, which dipped and swayed under her.

“Good day,” Combeferre replied, half expecting the strange animals to speak by now.

“Good day, good evening, good morrow,” the crow echoed. “Strange to hear “good” from a dead man. My cousins watched you by the river, dead man. It has been a long while since a mortal walked so far, especially a mortal not Walking a Path.”

Combeferre made a thoughtful sound. “I suspect most are eager enough to proceed to their afterlives.”

“Or otherwise,” the crow agreed, raspy but affable. “Most do not agree to walk the long journey. Most are not called by a god, with sparkling souls lodged in their breasts. Your friends make a lovely crown of feathers, dead man.”

“You have a lovely crown of feathers, yourself.” Combeferre told her, and couldn’t help a smile when she preened. “Is there far to go?”

“Farther still,” the crow agreed, then tilted her sleek head. “Have you something shiny for me?”

“Ah-” Combeferre had hardly thought to check his pockets, and in retrospect was half-surprised to have clothes at all, even this bare minimum. He slipped his hand into the pocket of his trousers, and started when something stuck his finger – one of his curved needles, absently tucked there on the barricades. He would need it not at all where he was going, this stray relic of a life that was irrevocably, startlingly, violently gone. Instead, he offered it up. “Would this do?”

The crow cried out, delighted, as she swooped down to snatch it in her beak before retreating to her peach tree. “Very well, dead man! Thank you. Here is this for you, in return.”

Her beak ducked into her wing, and she emerged with a shiny dark feather that was promptly dropped, and Combeferre had to dart forward to catch it before it landed in the dirt.

It was a beautiful feather, the same dark, glossy iridescent ink as the river. Gently, he slipped it into his pocket, careful not to crush it.

“Thank you,” he said, sincerely. The crow dipped forward on her branch in an unmistakable bow, so he returned it before walking on.

Small piles of carefully stacked stones and carved shrines of wood and of stone began to decorate the loose path, the air dusted with the smoky scent of cedar. Stylized stone beings, strange and unfamiliar, stared out at Combeferre from their shelters, solemn as gargoyles but kinder. He longed to stop and study them, but had the sense that they were like altars, that it would be somehow remiss to stand before them as curiosities and leave no offerings.

The wide trees from the base of the mountain were replaced by smaller and more spindly varieties, most unidentifiable to Combeferre’s untrained eye, and yet the air didn’t seem shorter or colder at all. Faintly chilly, but only on the knife’s edge of uncomfortable, not the frozen, thin atmosphere that one would expect so high up. The march of small structures continued, the icons giving way to small fires, brightly burning and flickering comfortingly in their contained spaces.

They must have had some grounding in the world, but Combeferre was unfamiliar with their origins. There had been _so much_ he had never known and now never would. He would mourn the lack of paper to take notes, but it would be a useless thing, never to be read again.

When the winding track leveled off in a plateau, Combeferre turned to survey how far he’d come. The same pale grey light suffused the valley, covering everything in a nearly moonlit glow. The mountain spread out below his feet, skirted with green. He could see the plains, unmoving and waiting, and beyond them the rolling hills, and very far off the wide curve of a road, all bordered by the deep cut of the black river, trees bowing to it from their banks. Beyond that, all was heavy mist, like a humid summer morning or the remnants of a winter rainstorm.

It was a dizzying precipice, like swaying atop a –

Combeferre stopped himself, took a breath, laid a hand over his chest like he could feel gentle human warmth emanating from the life-threads twined around his heart. He stared out at the grand, extraordinary view, watching a group of cranes drift down to the river.

How amazing, to see and to know all of this unbelievable grandeur, and how strange and sad that he could tell no one about it, might not even remember it once it was done. He stood, looking, until his destination tugged at him again.

It felt all too much like metal piercing his skin for a moment, reminded him all too much of the dizzying moment of wavering before he collapsed backwards.

Combeferre sat down hard, legs all but giving out underneath him. Shock, perhaps, delayed.

He had _died_.

It was for the best of causes, but he was several days dead and _alone_. There was no Enjolras beside him to fix his eyes on the future, no Courfeyrac to befriend the birds and beasts with more amiable equanimity than Combeferre might muster. Nor any of the rest of them, who had fallen beyond his sight.

He buried his face in his hands and tried to breathe through the weeping.

There had been such blood, such death already. He had seen the body of an old man crumple for the sake of a flag, had seen Enjolras driven to be both as terrible and compassionate as any human could be. And yet, it was own death that stuck between his teeth like a bundle of feathers choking him.

Combeferre had _died_ , full of hope and pain, the horrible weight of a life he could not save dragging his arms down. His eyes had been fixed on the sky, above smoke and grit, but he had died alone.

It was a phantom pain, stabbing between his ribs and threatening to roil up his throat. He had pushed past and ignored it, for the continuation of consciousness, for the sake of his comrades, for the weirdness of this strange half-realm.

The tears and the weight of it ambushed him, here at the summit of the mountain.

Grief wracked him.

At length, there was a light pressure on his knee. Combeferre dragged the tears from his eyes and squinted down, limbs trembling.

A weasel, sleek and small, peered up at Combeferre, rounded ears perked up attentively.

“Why do you weep, Walker?” he asked, glossy eyes of jet studying him with concern.

“Death was harder than expected,” Combeferre answered, belatedly taken aback at his own candor.

The weasel pushed himself a little higher, head cocking to the side. “It always is. Do you weep for yourself?”

Combeferre considered that, his chest heaving with exertion that even hours of climbing a mountain had eluded. “Yes. For my friends, too, and the world. For my family. For all the things that could have been and were not.”

The weasel made a quiet chirring noise. “There are worse things to weep for. All the dead cry, dead man. Even those who are Walking.”

“I met a crow who implied that I was doing something other than Walking,” Combeferre told him, carding his hair back in an attempt to find his composure.

“Perhaps then,” the weasel agreed. “You _do_ go somewhere, but you are Walking a path that is well known here, too. Knowledge is a powerful thing, even if one collects it without intent. Neither path is an easy one.”

Combeferre smiled at that, even if it felt raw. “Do people come here often, then?”

“Oftener than you would think,” he replied. With a lithe ease, he sprang the rest of the way up on Combeferre’s leg, tilting his chin higher, a lovely creature painted in brown and white. “Though a dead man Walking is an unusual thing. You have come a very long way – what for?”

It was a question that had been nagging at the back of his mind, and yet, again, the answer came to his mouth easily.

“For the hope of making something better,” Combeferre said. “Because there should be a world driven by kindness and knowledge and people working together.”

The weasel seemed satisfied with that. “That is a good reason to go a long way, Walker. It is no shame to mourn your death – what is this but a place to mourn death and find fortune?”

“If this is a place between states, then I suppose it must be so.” He sighed, but catharsis was already filling up the ache in his bones. “Is that why you are here?”

“I am a creature of many contradictory things,” the weasel agreed, seeming pleased with himself. In a flash, it scurried up his shirt sleeve, claws barely pricking his skin, and touched its wet nose to his jaw. “You are doing well, dead man, and you linger here long enough. Make your way down, now, because you have a way still to go.”

“Thank you.” Combeferre held out his free hand, and the weasel brushed his head against it before scrambling down, then up an outcropping of boulders. Still not sore, Combeferre pushed himself to his feet and dusted himself half-heartedly free of dirt, the pull of where he needed to go rushing back all at once.

“You are most welcome,” the weasel replied, giving another little warbling noise, and his eyes followed Combeferre as he started down the other side of the mountain.

The small shrines and stacks of stone continued their march, embedded beside the track, some covered in ancient moss, some scrubbed like new. The fires in them burned white and blue, small stars the size of a fist.

Still, the dirt and rock stayed firm under his feet, the trees increasing in size once more, sheltering branches reaching as high as they dared, and the respectful, uncanny silence held.

Further around the side of the mountain, Combeferre could see a slim figure making their own way up, a flash of bright color and little more from this distance. They raised an arm in greeting but did not call out, and so Combeferre raised his in return before continuing on. He wondered, idly, if that pilgrim knew they had waved to little more than a ghost.

The far side of the mountain seemed less steep than the side he had traversed up, but its base was clouded with fog, only the tall tops of pines poking their heads free of it. That only confirmed Combeferre’s suspicion that the mist was an unnatural thing, cloaking whatever someone had yet to reach. Knowledge, as the weasel had said, was a powerful thing.

Combeferre had put little stock in the idea of transcendent nature, especially as in opposition to the wonder of human innovation, but he could see what sparked the initial idea. The endless wild that seemed to spread around him was something vast and complicated, a mirror to the human soul and its own living thing all at once. Even as tranquil a state as this, lacking storms and lacking change, was uncontrollable, itself a reflection of the unknown and unknowable.

Dawn hovered permanently out of reach, the cool grey sky hanging with the promise of it, but never following it to completion. Completion, for better or worse, either lay forward in the true lands of the dead, or behind, in the world of the living. But, perhaps, given that he was traveling forward to a land of _yet-to-be_ living, the directions mattered less than the transitions.

In any case, the branches of the trees began to fold together above his head, filtering the light down to pale streaks, and the rocks gave way to matted grass and low plants, and Combeferre felt peace settle around him. The tumult of acknowledging his death, and the loss that came with it, eased with each step, acceptance settling on his shoulders.

Slowly, the trees thinned out, too, sparser clusters opening to the blank, cool heavens.

“Would you like one of us to take up your soul, dead man?” The question, though it should have alarmed him, was polite.

Combeferre looked up and found a handful of vultures gazing down at him, the one that had spoken rustling its wings before settling them again.

“No, thank you,” he said, as courteously as he could. “I have a long way yet to go, and my own souls to carry.”

The vulture nodded. “If you change your mind, there is always someone waiting. Luck on your journey, dead man – souls are a heavy weight to carry.”

He returned the creature’s nod, hand absently touching his chest again. By now, Combeferre had mastered the trick of calling the threads into sight, the pool of gold, with the faint strands stretching back the way he had come, a reassurance. Still lonelier than to have them walk by his side, but he was sure they would lend him their faith and strength as much as they were able, and that would have to suffice.

The dirt under his feet transitioned seamlessly to sand, the trees yielding their place to scrub and brush. Combeferre had always known the desert would be dry, but it was a different thing all together to feel desiccated even in the mildest sting of its wind. This reflection, still and quiet, must have been as mild a version of the desert as the mountain had been of those he knew previously.

Not that it was an untrue representation, Combeferre imagined, but one distilled to its essence. To _be_ a thing did not necessarily require extremity, only that it capture its essential nature. It was a thought that borrowed rather heavily from Duns Scotus, perhaps, and Aristotle before him – _ens inquantum ens_ – that perhaps required some further refinement, and Combeferre would have given very much to read and hold further discussion on the topic.

This desert, which lacked the scouring heat Combeferre had read accounts of, was nevertheless definitively a desert. Barren would be the wrong word for it, but hungry might be. Hollow, in the way of things too vast to comprehend, where the mind attempted to fill what nature did not.

But then… Combeferre paused to look up, his brow furrowing. The wan silver sky had darkened to slate, touched by blues and purples where it sheltered the desert, as though threatening rain, or a dusk that may never come.

It was strange, to see the sky change after so long, and it _felt_ closer to a destination, the tug at his heart redoubling with the thought.

The sand stretched on beyond his sight, though, and Combeferre almost wished his feet felt weary, just so he would have a better grasp on how long he had walked. It could have been a week or a month, for all the difference it made to him. It could have been a year, and he would never have known. After such a long period of living his life in urgency and hopeful impatience, time _not_ mattering was a very strange thing, almost stranger than the purely incredible things he encountered here.

Occasionally, a snake would lift its head to watch him, but none of them called out, nor did the few skittering lizards that crossed his path, and Combeferre walked in a silence that seemed deeper and more echoed than it had before. Above him, the sky grew incrementally darker.

A shadow split out of the dim, swinging wide to trot up beside him. It looked somewhat like a dog and somewhat like a fox, with a narrow, clever face and wide, pointed ears, and long, delicate legs. Its coat was golden against the blue-cast sand and sky, the ashy spotted cloak of its back standing out all the more. A jackal, he guessed, from images and descriptions, though it was at once stranger and more familiar than he could have previously imagined.

“I am glad I have no need to howl for you,” she told him, mirth in her voice. “It gets tiring, howling so many deaths.”

“I think my omens were well in hand, yes.” It came out less dry than Combeferre thought it might, too distracted in studying the jackal loping along by his side. “Are you a jackal?”

“I _am_ the howler, so yes. There is another name for my kind, but that will do,” she agreed, following it with a short, sharp bark. “Be glad you made my acquaintance! My cousins would disrupt you rather more. Some of the jackals are somber, but the coyotes would delight in giving you trouble. I think, though, that you will not cross their paths.”

Combeferre was unsure how to respond to that, though curious at the notion that this creature, like the crow before, could conceive of being _related_ to other species of animals. The coyote was something barely known even to him, mostly referred to as some form of Mexican wolf. But, perhaps, the animals here were influenced by humans and their categories. Truly, it was strange, if no stranger than many other things he had seen so far.

“Your words are appreciated,” he said at length, earning another barking chuff. “Your company is as well.”

“Company is a pleasant thing.” Unlike the other creatures, she did not melt back into the landscape, but kept easy pace beside him despite only coming to his knee, her bushy tail swaying with her brisk walk.

Over hills and long level stretches, she stayed beside him in companionable silence, the oppressive cavity of the low dunes fading back. The sky overhead edged to charcoal, casting everything in low, violet shadows. Even more than the serenity of the mountain, the empty, heavy calm of the desert drowned out the sharp ricochets and shouts of the barricade and its narrow alley. The pressing tension of those months, building to a snapping point, ebbed back with all the open air and hushed shifting of the sand.

The jackal’s ears perked up as they crested a dune, flicking to the side.

“Please excuse me,” she said, soft even as she broke the silence. “My duty draws me away. Thank you for the company.”

“Thank you for yours. It honored me,” Combeferre replied, nodding his head respectfully.

Another chuff as she dropped back on her haunches, and then she let out a high, mournful wail that rang far and away.

It lingered even as she sprang back to her feet and leapt from the dune, racing off into the darkness.

The strings in Combeferre’s chest resonated with her cry, the instinctual tremor of matching states. Still, they did not drown out the pull forward, only amplified it. The sands stretched on, but still, Combeferre felt inexplicably closer.

Without the jackal walking beside him, the silence swelled again, but a few faint pinpricks of stars began to dot the sky. It was always difficult to see the stars in Paris, when compared to home, and even if it was only a few, they were clear and bright as the grand sort of ideas that stirred his soul. He studied them, but there were too few for any pattern or constellation, at least none that he could pick out without further reference.

Though still not fatigued, just tired, Combeferre sat at the top of one particularly high sand dune, carefully seeking out a stable spot to sit. The sand was cool underneath him, and there was a slight, cold breeze, occasionally sending sheets slipping further down.

After moving for so long, it was odd to rest. Odder still, to sit without pressing obligations or threat of danger, and the tug in his chest eased, as though recognizing the necessity of the moment.

Combeferre sighed, tilting his head back to look up at the sky, black and thick as a winter coat. It was no mournful thought, now. Even with no regimented time, there was only so long that immediate sting of pain could last. The memory was still sharp, a knife point he edged around lest it drown him in agony, but the _emotion_ of the moment, the chaos and painful hope and tender grief, those were muffled with the distance of many landscapes.

And before him, new horizons opened, vistas of thought he never could have considered. What oppressions could there be in a new world? Lacking the preconceptions of the old world, the fallacy of divine right and perhaps even the disparagement of women, what grand and formerly impossible things could exist? A people driven by kindness and humble self-correction could welcome a conflagration greater than all the rubble of the monarchy. There could be things that even Combeferre, as he was, could not conceive or understand, or that he might ignorantly shrink from.

Hope, which had burned to a low and stubborn ember, flared in him.

At the end of this wearying road, possibility waited, and his friends to be reborn into that world with him. That path might be as long and astonishing as this one, but he would have the best of company on that journey.

This darkness was not cold ignorance, but warmth, the regenerative night that allowed the day to dawn all the brighter. Laughter cracked his chest open, and Combeferre let himself fall back into the sand, content and brimming with fondness as he stared up at the scattered stars.

When joy bubbled back down to something that could be contained in his skin, Combeferre levered himself to his feet and did his best not to tumble down the rest of the sand dune. His feet were steady enough, having walked long enough to become accustomed to the shift of loose sand under his feet, and the novelty of it had not quite worn off even now.

The first glimmer at the edge of sight was faint and brief enough he’d thought it a trick of his eye, but it continued as he grew closer. Combeferre had read a bit on the mirage phenomenon and assumed it required the sun and immense heat, but he reconsidered, however briefly.

As the sands flattened out and thin, sparse grasses jutted stubbornly up from them, however, it was unmistakably a sea. Vast, abyssal, darker even than the river, only occasionally glinting from those brilliant stars.

Unlike the river, though, Combeferre did not feel pushed away, but propelled forward.

It was impossible, but this was an impossible place and he was a dead man.

From long habit, he unlaced his shoes and removed his stockings, bundling them and tying them in such a way that he could sling them over his shoulder rather than abandoning them on the shore. With the same deliberate care, he rolled up his trouser cuffs and then straightened, staring out at the water a moment more.

If he closed his eyes, he could almost envision the pull of the deity, a bright blue line leading out across the water and further on still.

With the firm caution of testing a hypothesis, Combeferre stepped out onto the shallows, and the water – astoundingly – held firm under his feet, giving like spring hay. More surely, he took another step, then another, fascinated by the way the surface rippled under his weight.

For all his agnosticism, this seemed vaguely blasphemous. Who was he to walk on water? He, who would not affirm miracles, could surely not be the subject of one.

Yet perhaps it was not solely the providence of a singular divine. Perhaps it was not the matter of _one_ faith, but simply a matter of faith. Even Combeferre’s questioning faith, tattered in some ways, but holding at the core a willingness to suspend disbelief in favor of evidence. Perhaps it invalidated nothing, only expanded his view.

As he went, the sky slowly lightened as the stars clustered and bloomed, dotting unfamiliar patterns across the darkness. Beneath his feet, beneath the reflected sparks of starlight, the sea almost seemed to glow from within, a gentle green and blue in spectral slants.

A dolphin broke the surface, edging backwards as it squeaked, snout almost seeming to beam at him.

“Hello, Walker!” she greeted, propelling herself backwards. “Greetings, traveler! It is always nice to greet souls on the sea.”

“Hello and greetings.” Combeferre did not quite yet dare to stop walking, but the dolphin hardly seemed to hold that against him. “It is very nice to have company, even if for a moment.”

“My family and I go to ferry souls tonight,” the dolphin informed him, ducking under the water before popping back up, a small and sleek form limned in the light. “May you carry yours as safely as we do ours.”

“And to you,” Combeferre replied, formally. He waited, thinking that perhaps the dolphin would offer advice or ask a question, but she must have only wanted to exchange greetings and well wishes, because she dove and vanished under the water with a flick of her tail.

It bolstered him all the same, something new to think on and puzzle over as he walked, seeing only the endless sea and sky.

Occasionally, in the distance, he could see dark figures steering unfamiliar boats. Even from the distances that reduced them to silhouettes, they seemed substantial, something even _more_ than the many creatures he had encountered. Gods, perhaps, deities ferrying favored souls to afterlives Combeferre could not envision. Some acknowledged him with a stately nod, while some simply slid by in silence, only their boats leaving stirring rings in their wakes.

Far beneath his feet, Combeferre could see vast shapes moving, the sinuous movement of underwater dwellers. After so many sights obscured by mist and darkness, it was a welcome thing, to be able to see something so alien and wonderful. Occasionally something would approach the surface to study him, but would swim away again without exchanging words.

Combeferre had seen the ocean before, and knew it to be a testy, tempestuous, uncontrollable force of nature, where storms could dash even the proudest ships on rocks, drag even the strongest swimmers out with its tide.

The sea here was nearly mirror smooth, and pleasantly warm under his feet even in the perpetual night. It was deadly, no doubt, because that danger was part of what _made_ the sea, but it was difficult to fear anything in a place so awe-inspiring, so astounding. There were no landmarks, no directions but the inevitable draw on Combeferre’s heart, and even more than the broad desert, this sea was _vast_.

Slowly and all at once, movement unfurled at the corner of his eye, lights twisting into visibility in the sky. Vivid green, twisting and shimmering like a serpent, with purple dancing at its edges, stretching like a fluttering ribbon across the field of stars, curling and coiling.

The aurora borealis.

Combeferre had read the bulletins just two years previous, discussing the appearance of the phenomenon, but had never dreamed to see it himself. Yet it could be nothing else, and words did it very poor justice.

Stunning. It was stunning, incredible, strange, and it drew a delighted excitement up in his chest. Combeferre stared at the lights, committing them to memory, until they slowly moved across the sky, fading from his view with a few last faintly green shimmers.

Only then did he realize he was standing still, the water holding him with seemingly no effort. It stayed steady even under that observation, only trembled faintly when he lifted his foot once more.

Slowly, he started once more in the direction of his destination, the draw like a gentle undercurrent to the too-full well of wonder in his chest.

The stars lost none of their beauty for having seen the lights, but Combeferre found himself glancing about them every so often in hopes of another trace, holding the memory tightly to himself even as he drew further and further from the place where he’d seen them.

It seemed, almost, that the stars loomed larger the further he walked, white glows brightening as the light of the ocean dimmed, slowly and slightly.

All at once, Combeferre stepped from one dark ripple into another dark space, and found the world flipped.

There was only darkness under his feet, stars scattered like wildflowers around him, with the ocean a muted blue-green hanging overhead. He reeled for a moment, disoriented, mind flashing back to that teetering stone and bright sky before he steadied, hand clutched to his heart as though he could hold himself in the _now_ through sheer force of will.

Combeferre took a deep, unnecessary breath and then another, taking a glance at the glowing strands of souls sitting patiently beneath his ribcage, and took a cautious step. The void under his feet caught and held, and urgency surged in him.

Not the urgency of fear, nor the urgency of incipient violence that was a tightly contained chaos. Only the well-worn urgency of the lane to home, where the promise of burdens laid down spurred the feet and heart to quicken.

Despite himself, Combeferre lengthened his stride, steps carrying him upward now, but the sea never grew closer, never threatened to brush his head. His bare feet touched on stars, but though they were startlingly warm, they did not burn him. They were small, too small to be stars as he knew them, but they were undoubtedly stars. They held under his feet like stair steps, propelling him higher and higher in the inverted sky.

Slowly, the ocean faded away above him, edging into glossy reflection and then to simple darkness, studded with more stars.

The stars, too, began to fall away, until at last Combeferre walked on darkness alone, not so alienating as it was when he embarked, all that time ago.

His pool of souls glowed stronger and without effort, radiating something bright and vital. The pull fell away as his eyes began to resolve a shape in the shadows, and Combeferre slowed to a more moderate, controlled pace.

“I have walked the long road,” Combeferre found himself saying, the words tripping from his tongue, even as the deity stood before him, still strange and animal, but more coherent than the fragmented elements Combeferre had seen before.

“I greet you at the end of it,” the deity replied. In the blink of an eye, it was _different_.

Manlike, more or less, with a sharp face and oil slick eyes. Its hair was dark with feathers curling through, but did little to conceal the still bat-like ears, relaxed and at ease. The fangs in its mouth were not threatening and its smile was undoubtedly genuine. It was clad in bright robes of what looked like rough silk, layered and embroidered in no style he could name, though the sleeves only fell to the elbow before cascading towards its feet. A strange deity, but the same one, in the way that a star was utterly a star.

It reached out a hand, dark claws in place of nails, and just touched Combeferre’s chest in echo of its farewell. The threads of gold unwound themselves, twining up the god’s arm one by one and twisting there without hesitation or fear, decorating it like bracelets.

“Have you already asked them, about being born in your world?” Combeferre asked, unable to help himself. He felt tired, of the sudden, acutely aware of his unkempt hair and bare feet, the shoes strung over his shoulder, the scars on his heart that still seemed so fresh.

The deity’s face softened, its fingertips just brushing Combeferre’s chin before withdrawing. “Yes. I asked them before I asked you to carry that burden, or there would have been no point to asking you at all. You carried them well.”

“They’re my friends,” he said simply, which he supposed was all that truly needed to be said.

It nodded. “And not the only ones, I see. Crows do not give trinkets lightly.”

Reminded suddenly of the feather in his pocket, Combeferre blinked, going to fish it free. It was as immaculate and glossy as it had been when he’d first put it there, gleaming faintly with reflected light like the edge of a knife. “Ah. Yes.”

“You will keep that too, in a fashion,” the deity said with the air of deciding something. It plucked the feather from Combeferre’s fingers and tucked it in his hair with a gentle motion. “You Walked very well, and I thank you for it.”

Combeferre thought about that for a moment, and decided it was a weighty compliment, not lightly given. He considered asking if he could speak to his friends, who lacked forms, or how long his walk had taken, how much time had passed. But. Faith and new things, with the wisdom he had gained never stripped away, even if he remembered little of how he had attained it. The promise of a world without the black marks of the one he had left.

“What will happen now?” he asked.

The deity tilted its head. “You have done me a great service and you have earned more than you know, on your journey. I will not take that from you any more than I would take your name. Now you take your rest.”

“I have a selfish question,” Combeferre said, and could not regret the asking. “Will I know them, in this new world of yours?”

“Of course. As though your souls could ever forget one another,” it replied, sounding nearly fond.

It waited for his nod, then reached out one hand, the backs of its curved claws brushing the side of his face.

“Now sleep, Aimée, Beloved,” it said, a quieter echo of a purr and resounding bell in its voice, “and wake to a new dawn in a new sky.”

Combeferre closed his eyes and thought of pale blue, soft and promising.


End file.
